The Grainger College of Engineering
Center for Autonomy

Narendra Ahuja

Narendra Ahuja
Narendra Ahuja
  • Research Professor, formerly Donald Biggar Willett Professor
  • Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus
  • Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering
(217) 333-1837
120 Coordinated Science Lab

For More Information

Education

  • PhD Computer Science University of Maryland May 1979

Teaching Statement

Teaching courses on Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Computer Engineering, Probability Theory, Robotics, and Knowledge Networks. In the last few years, co-developed two new interdisciplinary courses with colleagues from other departments: (1) "Visualizing and Navigating Knowledge Networks." Co-developed with Profs. N. Contractor of Dept. of Speech Communication and Prof. M. Twidale of School of Library and Information Science. Under Madden Grant, awarded by UIUC Chancellor's office. Taught twice. (2) "Image Structure, Content and Depiction." Co-developed with Prof. P. Dhillon of Dept. of Educational Policy Studies. Being taught in Spring 2008.

Research Statement

(1) Introduced a new computational approach to automatically extracting syntax of images, and using it for automated image understanding. We introduced automated ways of discovering, modeling, recognizing and explaining object categories occurring in arbitrary image sets without supervision and automatically organizing these categories into taxonomies. (2) Introduced a novel, Fourier based formulation for representation and synthesis of videos of dynamic textures. Conventionally, dynamic textures have been analyzed only in spatial domain.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Undergraduate student can participate in research projects in the areas of computer vision, pattern recognition, human computer interaction, novel cameras and image and video retrieval.

Research Interests

  • Computer Vision, Robotics, Image Processing, Sensors, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Environments, Intelligent Interfaces

Research Areas

  • Algorithms and computational complexity
  • Computed imaging systems
  • Computer vision and pattern recognition
  • Embedded, real-time, and hybrid systems
  • Image, video, and multimedia processing and compression
  • Machine learning
  • Natural language processing
  • Robotics and motion planning
  • Speech recognition and processing

Honors

  • Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2006
  • Associate in the Center for Advanced Study, 2005-06
  • On Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students, 2002
  • 1999 UIUC Campus Award for Guiding Undergraduate Research - Honorable-Mention
  • 1999 Donald Biggar Willet Professorship of UIUC College of Engineering
  • 1999 Emanuel R. Piore Award of IEEE
  • 1998 Technology Achievement Award of SPIE
  • 1998 Associate in The Center for Advanced Study
  • Fellow of AAAS, 1996
  • Fellow of ACM, 1996
  • Fellow of SPIE, 1995
  • Fellow of IAPR, 1994
  • Fellow of AAAI, 1992
  • Fellow of IEEE, 1992
  • 1990 Beckman Associate in the Center for Advanced Study
  • 1985 University Scholar Award
  • 1984 Presidential Young Investigator Award